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Saturday, November 24, 2012

Linux Mint 14 vs Ubuntu 12.10: A Comparison

I have a lot of friends asking me of whether they should install Ubuntu 12.10 or Linux Mint 14, which is also Ubuntu - but a bit refreshed. Given that I reviewed both of them on the same system - Asus K54C, 2.4 Ghz Core i3 processor with 2 GB RAM, I thought a comparison between the mother distro and it's most famous derivate deem rational.

As evident, the results highlight Unity makes Ubuntu a bit slower compared to Linux Mint with significantly higher RAM consumption. Cinnamon 1.6, on the other hand, gets it right.Ubuntu 12.10 is ahead in terms of booting time. Linux Mint, conventionally, take a bit of time to boot.

On aesthetics department, Unity looks simply awesome but a bit buggy and crashes often. Also, Unity is not customizable. Cinnamon 1.6 is more customizable and looks good with Nemo file manager the grey and dark colors complementing each other. Especially Nemo is way ahead of Nautilus in terms of looks. Linux Mint has some cool new wallpapers as well. Still, I'll keep Ubuntu marginally ahead in terms of looks.

Linux Mint is more or less complete, even on live boot, in terms of applications and support to multi-media or flash plugins. Ubuntu too downloads these multi-media support and adobe flash support at the time of installation though these are not there at time of live boot.Except VLC (absent in default installation of Ubuntu), rest of the applications are more or less same for both Ubuntu and Mint. Actually, Ubuntu is marginally ahead as some additional features like Web apps, enhanced social media integration with photo lens in addition to music and video lens, etc. are not there in Linux Mint though Mint has the new workspace naming and notification applet to showcase.

Final verdict depends on the user - if you are looking for a rock-solid operating system where everything just works, Linux Mint 14 is the best for you. However, if you are looking for a more social network oriented operating system (similar to Android) and you don't mind occasionally hiccups, then Ubuntu 12.10 is more suited to you. Personally, I go for rock solid performance and Linux Mint is my preferred operating system.

I was using Mint with Cinnamon, but found it a bit high in system resources, so I tried Mate, but not much better. Now I am using Mint XFCE, which is much lower. You can customise it quite a lot with Mint menu and Nemo, or even make it resemble Unity with Cairo Dock.

Ubuntu was a no-no, with repeated crashes and a real resource hog. Worse than some KDE distros.

XFCE is definitely a saving grace given the instability and high resource requirements for Gnome 3 and its derivatives like Cinnamon. I still crave for Gnome 2 and I agree with you, Mate is not a good substitute to Gnome 2, in spite of the fact that Mate is forked from Gnome 2. XFCE actually fills the gap and a lot of my friends who used to be fond of Gnome 2, have now shifted to XFCE distros like LMint XFCE, Xubuntu, Manjaro, Arch with XFCE, Bridge, etc. XFCE is very customizable and can be made to look whatever the user prefers.

Ubuntu's Unity is a big pain - it is still in the developing stages and I guess at least a couple of more releases are required for it to settle down. I agree with you completely on your feedback for Ubuntu. Till Unity matures to a stable DE, even for me, Ubuntu is a big no-no.

yes, i agree, ubuntu's unity is still developing stage. For Example, my ubuntu's panel bar does not show ibus icon until i do a command in terminal. ibus is running but icon does not show up after log in. that bug is nagging me...shit!

Yeah, mint 13(mate) is the best linux dist ive used till date and trust me iv tried em all. Currently running ubuntu tho but with cinammon desktop, unity is not ready yet. all the while i used 13, there wher no crashes or glitches but since i switched to ubuntu 12.10 (just for kicks), ive had a few minor issues, but issues nonetheless. im switching back permanently to mint13 when i have the mental energy.

Yes, LM 13 Mate is very good and is very intuitive to use. For Unity, you can please check out the Ubuntu 12.04.2 release. Having used Unity for a month or so, right now I am hooked to it. Unity is quite efficient now and consumes CPU & RAM equivalent to any other Cinnamon or Mate distro.

Even I gave up Ubuntu 12.04 initially with really poor performance and instability because of Unity. But, with the Ubuntu 12.04.2 update, my opinion on Unity has changed. Please give it a shot and let me know your experience with Unity.

I am at a loss on the stability issues you all seem to have. I have an Ubuntu 12.10 box running a Sandy Bridge i7 with 4GB of ram and an nVidia GT210 with and I have nary a hiccup. The speed and responsiveness are also without complaint. I am running an SSD for boot and a 10 drive mdadm RAID 6 volume for storage. The box sees moderate to heavy use as a php, ruby, rails, and python dev box. Its a target for my game stream captures and my home file server. It is my central backup node for all my machines before that data gets pushed to CrashPlan's servers. I can't ever say I have had any issue.

I am running Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS on Sandy bridge i7 3rd gen with 8 GB RAM and Nvidia GEFORCE 630M and it runs really smooth. So does any other OS I throw at it, even Windows 8. But, when I wanted earlier to run Ubuntu 12.04 (initial release) on another Core i3 laptop with 2 GB RAM, it didn't give good results with frequent notifications of background apps crashing. The real fun comes when I move to another netbook with Intel Atom processor and 1 GB RAM - Ubuntu 11.04 worked fine on it in Gnome classic mode. Neither 11.10, nor 12.04 or 12.10 works at all on it. Linux Mint XFCE (13 and 14) works on it really well!

The main reason for me to migrate from Windows XP/7 to Linux was resource efficiency. Unity in a way was defeating that purpose being a resource hog. However, Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS actually is far better and consumes resources equivalent to any good KDE distro out there. So, definitely Unity is maturing and getting better.

However, I would like to see customization and flexibility in Ubuntu Unity DE. Right now it is like Mac and I hate that aspect. Linux means freedom and users should be able to customize the way it should look. Canonical has promised enhanced customization by next year - let's see.

To you guys complaining about how sluggish/buggy ubuntu is, try some arch goodness, but without the install pain. Manjaro is based on arch, but easier to set up and get running than ubuntu with their new gui installer.I recommend the xfce flavor because it is lightning fast and super easy to customize.

Seriously, if you have been using Linux for more than 6 months, try Manjaro. Between the Manjaro forums and the arch wiki, there is nothing you can't do.

I agree completely. I am using Manjaro Openbox and KDE (as dual boot) on a Pentium 4 PC I have. I don't think any Linux KDE distro will run on it, except Manjaro KDE! Amazingly lightweight and super fast distro.

Ubuntu is definitely easier to use but Manjaro is fast catching up. I nicknamed Manjaro in one of my posts as "Linux Mint of the Arch world":).

I have used Mint and Ubuntu with the Cinnamon desktop and Ubuntu blows Mint away. As for ready to go right out the box, it takes me 10 min's to download everything on Ubuntu that Mint has, yes it was a little extra work but I get what I want that way. The point of Linux is to have what you want not what they think you need so for me being able to get everything I want works for me and with being able to use Cinnamon or Mate on Ubuntu makes Mint pointless.

Whatever works for you, stick to it. Mint works better for me than Ubuntu. Otherwise, if you ask me, I prefer any day Arch Linux over other Linux distros. I can choose to create my own distro and don't include any redundant application in the process. Plus, it runs on half the resources that Ubuntu / Mint consumes. But, it takes a day or two to set things up and given the rolling release, you don't have to re-install! Also, Arch is bleeding edge.

I have Xubuntu installed on my htpc, Linux Mint Maya Xfce on my desktop, and Linux Mint Maya Mate on my laptop. I can tell you that Linux Mint is better in terms of performance, usability, customization, appearance, chosen applications, security, and stability. If you like to read crash reports and that fulfills a need within you, then go with Ubuntu.

Ubuntu 12.04 & 12.10 crash more often than not. Even I was put off after initial 2-3 weeks of usage and shifted to Mint Maya. Unity is still work in progress and that is what contributing to the instability you see.

A bit funny! Linux Mint has the same updates as Ubuntu, basically an Ubuntu spin! So, I disagree with your logic of Ubuntu receiving updates and LM not receiving it. Second, compiz works with Gnome 2 but not with Unity. Unity is actually overlaid on Gnome 3.4 shell - so I am interested to know how you installed Gnome 3 to it?

Anyway, whatever works for you, please continue using it. That's the beauty of Linux with so many options to choose from!

I agree. Ubuntu 12.04 LTS is significantly better than 12.10. I prefer Gnome 3 over Unity. It seems Ubuntu 12.10 is less stable and I constantly find issues with random components crashing (mostly the calendar). I haven't tried Mint in ages but I'm considering dual booting with a shared /home just to try it out. Honestly though, I'm very impressed with Gnome 3 and doubt I'll be swayed. I think I'd stick with Ubuntu though because boot time is important for me because I'm constantly shutting down my laptop and booting it up again. I will say, however, Mint looks like it has come a long way since I last tried it.

I agree. Ubuntu 12.04 LTS is a more stable release than Ubuntu 12.10 and actually performs better (please check my comparison of Ubuntu 12.04 vs Ubuntu 12.10). All my performance specs given are with Unity. Gnome fallback mode actually consumes less RAM and CPU. However, to me, Gnome 3 is not yet stable and is very inefficient. Simple, to change a wallpaper you need to go to settings -> background -> wallpaper then choose - a simple matter of right click does it in Gnome 2, XFCE, LXDE, or KDE. Gnome 3 is the symbolic representation of what is wrong with Linux! Unity is more intuitive though not stable yet. I am hoping by 14.04 LTS we'll have a stable release. Till then, XFCE is my saving grace :). Works like a charm in limited resources and performs like my favorite Gnome 2 DE.

Linux Mint is actually significantly more stable and offers better performance than Ubuntu. Not surprisingly, Linux Mint has the maximum hits in Distrowatch polls and is the number one distro in the Linux world. I tested Linux Mint on any and every system (specially Maya and Nadia releases), everytime it worked without fail. You should try Linux Mint (specially the XFCE release) at least one for a few days. It is a must try distro.

I prefer LinuxMint ever. It's ready since first install and it runs with no stops as Ubuntu use to do. It has cinnamon and mate for gnome and kde and it let me customize things much better than Ubuntu. Ubuntu is fine but with unity desktop it's not so productive as Mint does. But no matter what choice you do. What works to you is the best for you.

Well, your decision is certainly yours to make, but just to add my 2 cents, I think both the systems are quite similar on the productivity side if you use a launcher such as Synapse, Kupfer or Gnome Do

If ubuntu wants to go the mass then fix the lag.Remove unity.Yea i said it.And make a option to have everything work out of the box.Ubuntu was in best buy in version 8.04 and it was a bust.No one wanted to have to install ,ore stuff after installing there os. MAYBE ANDROID????

Really a brief, but good comparison. The principal design philosophy between the two distros often baffle me, but having been a long-time user (and lover) of Ubuntu, I find it slightly better than Mint every time.

I am having trouble with Mint...I have an old desktop with a Broadcom B4311 Wireless network card in it. Linux Mint doesnt recognize it. I have tried to put the driver on the pc but it is difficult. I cant figure out the terminal thing or ndiswrapper. ndiswrapper wants a windows driver that I cant seem to find on the web

Hi, your comparison is really informative and enticing one to go for mint. I am a novice to linux but using ubuntu for my desktop since 2009 (along with windows). However, when I tried to use netgear wireless adapter, I could see that it does not work in ubuntu. Further, there are issues in updating the software from ubuntu sofware centre. Now I made up my mind to try linux mint and replace ubuntu.

I am using Netgear N150 Wifi with Ubuntu and Linux Mint (and almost all the Linux distros released since 2011) everyday for last 3 years. If you can post a bit of details about the problem you are facing with Ubuntu, may be I can help.

On updating the Ubuntu installation, please check the mirrors that are being used. I found generally the US mirrors are the fastest (even sitting in India :)) and possibly a change in the mirror list will help you to get regular updates.

Unity, Mate, Cinnamon, Gnome, KDE, LXDE,XFCE, Openbox, etc. are DE (desktop environments) and Ubuntu, Mint, Archlinux, Fedora, OpenSUSE etc. are OS (operating systems). Cinnamon in Ubuntu is definitely a viable option and a lot of people use it. It is actually less RAM and CPU consuming that Ubuntu with Unity and is smoother to use.

Yes, at a high level. Certain operating systems like Archlinux, Slackware, etc. are inherently lighter than Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora. There using a lightweight DE like Openbox/LXDE actually makes them kind of ultra light :). Even certain applications like Midori, Dillo, Abiword, Gnumeric, etc. are lighter than their heavy weight counterparts like Firefox, Chrome or LibreOffice. Choosing right OS with a right DE and a handful of right apps - together they give you the desired effect.

Namaste Arindam ji, I am new to Linux. I never used it before. Yesterday I downloaded Mint 14 and installed it with Win8 everything is working fine except one thing that in Mint I am unable to browse internet I can open my homepage which is Google but other websites are not loading or Firefox show them loading but actually website never shows up.I tried different settings for DHCP, DSN and MTU both in modem and Mint to no avail. But my net is working fine in Win8. Can you help me sir? I could post this on Linux forum but I think I would get a reply sooner from you. One more thing, should we choose 32bit or 64bit of any distro ??

Possibly your Mint installation is not connected to the network. Are you using Wifi/Lan? Have you checked the DHCP? Click on the network icon on the right side of the bottom panel and check edit connections if you are using LAN. Else click the network icon to connect to your Wifi network. Please check and let me know.

32-bit or 64-bit depends on how much RAM you have? If it is greater than 3 GB using 64 bit. What is your Windows 8 installation? 32-bit or 64-bit?

Can you please check your TCP/IP settings in Windows? DHCP should not be set to automatic. I use both Wifi and LAN in Linux with Sify broadband and I have a IP address, DNS server address, etc. provided by Sify. You need to enter the same by changing DHCP from automatic to manual.

Please check your TCP/IP for the settings and let me know if it solves your issue.

Sir I managed to connect but doing something else. Earlier I had PPPoE connection settings in modem which means whenever I switch on modem it automatically connects to the internet and it was working fine in Windows but not in Mint, so I changed the PPPoE mode to Bridge mode in Modem(the mode in which we need to put our username-password given by BSNL every time and dial to connect to internet). And now in Mint I opened network connections and set my DSL settings. In these DSL settings it asked me for usrnm-pass and I put all this and click save then it easily connected and now every website is working fine. Earlier only google sites were working and even the bittorrent client Transmision was downloading movies with full speed but not other websites. I want want to make it connected automatically when I login to Mint.

Yes I can check TCP/IP settings in Windows. I never had a static IP and fixed DNS sever in windows. I have had dynamic IP address and DNS set to automatic though I would try agaain to change these settings in MInt and would tell you.

Good that it solved your problem. I use Sify broadband which has a static IP and without the DHCP settings to manual with appropriate IP settings, LAN won't work. Same goes for TCP/IP settings in Windows.

I found most of the things broken in the subsequent versions of ubuntu so after 5 years of ubuntu i was thinking about dumping ubuntu but still could not make a decision.What's the point of having an O.S which brings same bugs which were fixed in prior versions :(

There was one thing to change "MTU" value in Network Connections. After a fresh install of Mint it was set to automatic and I didn't change it, I was trying to change other parameters but all useless. Then somewhere I read to change MTU to different values, so I changed it to 1500 and it didn't work then I change it 1492 and again it didn't work then I change it 1488 and this time it worked fantastic. Now every website is working fine. So I just installed Mint and didn't touch anything in Network settings this time, just changed the MTU to 1488 and it worked good.

Both works well. It is your choice, if you've already installed Ubuntu then just add cinnamon desktop to it. It will save from installing a new distro and the hassle involved. Otherwise, go for Linux mint cinnamon.

I have never liked Unity. That's why during the last two years i haven't had Ubuntu even one of the OS of my dual boot Linux-desktop. Mint has been my default. Now i only have to make decision between Mint MATE of Cinnamon. Last year i picked MATE because Cinnamon has some annoying bugs. However the latest news are telling that Cinnamon might be good enough for Mint 15.

I found Cinnamon to be good in LMDE released recently. The frequent freezing is gone and it is more resource efficient. However, till using Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS, I used to hate unity as it was a resource hog. Now my opinion has changed. You can please give a shot to Ubuntu 12.04.2 - Unity actually performs better than some of the more acclaimed KDE distros.

I had installed Mint 13 Xfce to my sister's Samsung N210 Intel® Atom™ 1GB RAM and CPU N450 @ 1.66GHz × 2 . With compositing on; RAM use was around 200mb idle. I installed Mint 14 Cinnamon to the same machine and only removed a few services resulting in RAM use of 180mb while just as smooth and fast as xfce. Such a nice DE for a 10" netbook. Small 22pixel top panel and using the maximus extension. The brilliant Cinnamon menu lends itself nicely to this screen size.

i am new to this linux stuff and i like what i see so far but ubuntu has not been kind 12.04 freezes up alot and i was trying to get away from that windows problem... i have been lookin around and was thinkin i would like to try either mint or zorin... and was wondering if i have to delete/remove ubuntu first or will either or both install over it... using sony vaio e series i3 2.4 ghz 64 bit windows 7 home premium 4 g ram 750g hard drive just seems like ubuntu is kinda buggy started out with a bug saying there was crash and to report it and that went into a loop then started just freezing up while using different programs firefox from time to time thunderbird same browsing stuff that came with ubuntu install.. doesn't seem to matter what i am doing o yes it is a dual boot system and ubuntu 6. seemed to work fine with dual boot back when i did it.. so thought i would try 12.04 now ready to try something elsestopped using 6 because i was not able to devote time to learning the ins and outs of it at that time. any help will be greatly appreciated, if email is better for some response zemotel@att.net thank you

I'd love to discover who the moron/s was/were who decided that a "phone" interface was a good idea for a laptop (or even a tablet for that matter).

Unity SUCKS! BIGTIME! It's the most apalling piece of utter junk I've ever had the misfortune to try and operate. I do NOT want icons the size of skyscrapers down one side of my display thank you. I do not want to have to go searching for my apps by having to remember what they are called ... that was the WHOLE point of a point and click menu driven UI - one does not HAVE to remember WHAT something is called and if one can't remember its name, then just clicking and following through the menus will find it. Why do you think Win 8 is being universally panned by serious computer users? Same reason ... it SUCKS!

ONE simple, low height (~20 pixel) top bar and a similar sized one at the bottom worked great when X-window systems were first developed (I've been using them for over 27 years!) and they still do for any desktop, laptop, netbook or tablet. Leave the damned phone interface for the phones and let's keep a PROPER UI for the desktop/laptop/netbook/tablet - or at the very least give the user the choice (like Ubuntu USED to do).

Thanks for liking my review. I can tell you my personal experience - I am using Linux full time for last 4 years and haven't touched Windows much. I use the following softwares on a regular basis:Office: LibreOffice - it is good but possibly MS Office is better. You can use PlayOnLinux and Wine to install MS Office 2010 on Ubuntu/Mint.PDF viewer is in built and if you are an Adobe fan boy - Adobe has a Ubuntu version as well

Photos: Shotwell is good for photo management and uploading to Facebook/Picasa. Also, GIMP is a good substitute of Adobe photoshop. Further, I installed Photoshop using Wine.

Web Designing: I installed Dreamweaver studio and Fireworks in Wine/PlayonLinux

Browser: What is there in Windows, is there in Linux as well except the buggy internet explorer e.g. Firefox, Chrome, Opera, etc.

Movies: VLC player works best in both Linux as well as Windows.

Music: I haven't seen a better music player than Amarok. Plus, there are scores of other music players that work quite well.

Chat: Skype, Pidgin, Empathy - as good as any chat client you get for windows

Antivirus: Not required in Linux - if you are too scared Clamtk is there for you. But, not necessary.

Now, some niche software I use for my professional purposes like R, PSPP, etc. for data analysis - they have Linux versions as well.

All my application requirements are more or less met by Linux. Please let me know if you need anything outside the above list.

This is not to offend you but to show you that almost every variety of application exist in the Linux domain. If you think that lack of a specific app is not allowing you to migrate to Linux, please feel free to let me know.

HiI have been using Linux Mint 14 with MATE for a few months. Is it possible to switch to XFCE without reinstalling the entire OS? if yes, can you explain the process or suggest some good links for the same?